Mech 3

by Isaac Hooke

  “Maybe they were attacked by those Slicers,” Bender said. “And now the Slicers have come back to finish the job. Or something.”

  “Hard to say,” Rade commented. “We don’t really know anything at this point.”

  “We do know that the atmosphere is unbreathable,” Valjean said. “Composed mostly of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, with trace amounts of oxygen and variable amounts of water vapor.”

  “With all the alien plants around, you’d think there would be more oxygen,” Tahoe commented. “I’d like to see what kind of photosynthesis process these plants have going on. They’re probably using a reducing agent other than water: maybe hydrogen, or hydrogen sulfide.”

  “Their biology is certainly interesting, I’m sure,” Valjean agreed. “Also, gravity is still at one point two that of Earth. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that this was the homeworld of the aliens. Or perhaps a colony.”

  “That’s still mostly speculation at this point,” Rade said.

  The glowing hull vibrated beneath Rade. He turned around, afraid that the ship was going to take off and abandon them; he was ready to make a mad dash for the breach.

  Instead, he realized the depression near the center of the vessel was opening. It split apart into long, triangular pieces that moved up and outward like unfolding metal petals. In moments, a jagged rim surrounding the central depression, forming a crown of sorts.

  A platform emerged.

  Something was on it.

  Rade zoomed in.

  He saw a stooped creature, roughly the same size and shape as a Slicer. However, the digits on its forelimbs were smaller and nimbler, with no talons. Its legs were thinner, and no claws protruded from its toes. Its back was free of bony plates, and its tail reached to only a quarter of the size of the other aliens. It still had a bifurcated jaw however, a downward opening affair that hid several rows of powerful teeth, no doubt.

  “Is that some different class of Slicer?” Pyro asked.

  “Probably,” Rade said.

  “Guess you were right about these aliens having different castes,” Tahoe commented.

  The creature turned toward them and seemed to stiffen.

  “Uh, I think it’s seen us,” Bender said.

  The alien turned around and ran. It leaped off the far side of the platform and vanished past the rim of triangular shaped pieces that had emerged from the center of the ship.

  “Should we chase it?” Bender said. “I wanna chase it!”

  “We can follow it at a distance,” Rade said, breaking into a pursuing run. “But I don’t want to get too close… just because it appears slightly different from the other aliens, doesn’t mean its abilities aren’t the same. I’m not keen on seeing you ripped apart.”

  “Yeah, I’m not all that keen on that, either,” Bender said. “But I must admit, I do love myself a good bug hunt!”

  “I’m sure you do,” Rade said.

  Rade hadn’t gotten very far when ahead, from the opening in the center of the ship, Slicers began to emerge en masse. They flowed from the platform and out between the triangular sections of the opening, landing on the hull and streaming toward the Falcons. They spread out, forming a long line as they approached, effectively preventing the team from following the retreating alien. Rade and his team could try to circumvent them by rushing past the open spaces that remained to the left and right sides of the line, between the aliens and the outer periphery of the starship, but the Slicers would easily be able to intercept the mechs before they arrived.

  “All right, time to turn around!” Rade spun about, and headed back toward the further side of the starship he had left only moments before.

  “What if we can’t get down?” Jiang said. “The ship appears to be perched on top of a skyscraper, after all…”

  “We’ll find a way,” Rade said. “We still have a lot of jumpjet fuel. Though I’d like to conserve it, if possible.”

  He rapidly approached the edge of the starship, and slowed down for the last few meters, coming to a halt next to the ledge. He peered down.

  The starship was indeed perched on top of one of the buildings of course, but it was wider than the rooftop that contained it—like the other nearby skyscrapers, the upper section tapered toward the top. As such, the starship hung over the edge of the building here by a good fifty meters.

  He gazed at the buildings in front of him. The closest was a good twelve hundred meters away. Too far to realistically reach, given jumpjet fuel levels.

  He glanced at his rearview mirror. The Slicers had gained ground while the team remained there, hesitating at the starship’s edge.

  “Jump inward!” Rade said.

  He leaped off, and jetted toward the skyscraper that held the starship. He glanced at his overhead map, confirming that Pyro and Bender were doing the same on either side of him.

  He moved diagonally toward the building, carried downward at the same time by the heavy gravity. He retracted his shield and folded away his weapon so that his hands would be free for gripping. Before he contacted, he fired countering thrust to slow his descent and forward motion, but still slammed into the surface fairly hard.

  Almost immediately the thick branches of the vines that coated the surface began to snag at his mech. They invariably broke beneath his weight and momentum, slowing him down, so that he eventually came to a halt roughly three-fourth of the way to the bottom. The other mechs stopped at similar points beside him.

  Above, the lead aliens reached the edge of the starship, and simply leaped straight down, plunging to the street below. After hitting, they shook themselves, and then raced through the foliage, heading toward the base of the elliptical skyscraper to resume the chase.

  “Damn things,” Bender said. “Can’t shake ‘em!”

  “Climb around to the other side!” Rade ordered.

  He used the thick vines to pull himself sideways, planting his feet in the knottier sections. His servomotors whined under the stress of the heavier gravity.

  “Now I know what it feels like to be a monkey with a big dick!” Bender said. “Constantly snagging it in the branches while you’re trying to climb from tree to tree.”

  “Bro, your mech doesn’t have a dick…” Pyro said.

  “Speak for yourself!” Bender said. “Mine’s got the biggest around.”

  “Yeah, it’s rider,” Pyro commented.

  Rade reached the corner of the building. He glanced down. Below him, the Slicers had carved a trailed through the foliage, their path readily visible thanks to the sheer numbers of them that trampled through the undergrowth. Already some of them had reached the edge of the building, and were climbing up to chase Rade and his companions.

  “You think they’re tracking us by sound?” Tahoe said.

  “I suspect so, yes,” Rade said as he rounded the corner. “And for my mech, vision.”

  “That gives us an opportunity,” Tahoe said. “You could potentially leave your cockpit, and let Valjean continue alone. The rest of us could hide in this thick foliage. Our blending tech will allow us to blend in. Well, except for Jiang and Chow, but they’re mostly invisible anyway in the passenger seats. Just place a few branches in front of their upper bodies, and they’re good.”

  “Oh no,” Rade said, continuing away from the corner. “I… I can’t. I’m done sacrificing mechs. I just can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Nobody says it has to be a sacrifice,” Tahoe said. “Just draw them off. They won’t catch Valjean. We know our top speeds are faster than that of the Slicers.”

  “Yes, which is why we’re going to stay in our mechs, and just continue moving away,” Rade said.

  Except he knew their top speeds weren’t faster while climbing like this.

  Some of the aliens must have figured that out, because several appeared below, hooting and clacking loudly. They remained at the base of the building, taunting Rade and the others. Some leaped onto the foliage to climb up after them.

  Rade s
potted the jagged remnant of a building nearby, about a hundred meters away, reaching to a little under his current height. He hadn’t noticed the building earlier because he had been looking in the wrong direction from his perch on top of the starship. There was a pile of rocks in front of it, as if the upper portion of the building had collapsed at some point in the past.

  “Leap to that building!” Rade ordered.

  He highlighted it and shoved off from the current structure. He activated lateral thrust, and moved toward the target diagonally as gravity pulled him down. He landed midway to the top, along with the other two Falcons.

  On the overgrown street below, Slicers began moving away from the previous building, and carving a path through the foliage toward the new one.

  Rade used the thick foliage to readily climb to the jagged edge at the top; when he crested it, he saw that the building was hollowed out inside, with any floors having collapsed long ago—foliage covered the rock pile below. It was also missing its far wall, which had caved, leaving the building open on that side.

  Rade pulled himself over the edge. “Descend as fast as you can!”

  He pushed away from the wall; the inside was coated with crawling plants as well, and some of the thicker branches protruding from the surface snagged his mech, but their limbs broke away each time.

  He fired his aerospike thrusters before he hit the ground, slowing down enough to prevent the fall from damaging his mech. A small shockwave of leaves and broken limbs expanded outward from his impact site.

  Pyro and Bender created similar shockwaves when they impacted beside him.

  Rade turned around and shoved his way across the thick foliage that covered the ground inside the building. The terrain was uneven, courtesy of the rock pile below the undergrowth, so that Rade nearly lost his balance several times.

  “You all right back there, Tahoe?” Rade asked as he recovered his balance after his latest slip.

  “I’m getting a faceplate full of leaves, but otherwise fine,” Tahoe replied.

  “Gotta eat your greens,” Rade quipped.

  He reached the far side of the building, where the wall had collapsed, and clambered over the ruins. On his rearview camera feed, so far there was no sign of the pursuing aliens. Perhaps some were scaling the building in pursuit, but most of them were probably going around it. He glanced at the building walls that were still standing on either side, but none of the Slicers emerged from behind them. Yet.

  He reached street level, and continued through the thick undergrowth. Ahead, two mid-sized elliptical buildings resided relatively close together, forming a corridor about twenty meters wide. The one on the right was damaged, with vines growing from large cracks. Rade thought it was ready to collapse.

  With a quick glance to confirm the Slicers were not yet in view, Rade asked Valjean: “Do we have enough charges to take out the building on the right?”

  “A quick material scan tells me the building is a composite of marble and metal,” Valjean told him. “Ordinarily, I would say that meant no, we do not have enough charges. But given the weakened structural integrity, there is a good possibility it will fall. I’m highlighting the optimal charge placement areas in order to collapse the building onto this very street … assuming that’s what you intend.”

  “Overlay the planned impact zone over my vision in red,” Rade said.

  The street became crimson in front of him, between the two buildings.

  “Perfect, you read my mind,” Rade said. “Cyclone, assign charge placements to yourself, Jiang, and Chow.”

  Tahoe divvied up the charge placements, and the locations highlighted on the HUD changed to one of three colors. Then Tahoe swung down and fetched the remaining charges from Rade’s storage compartment. Jiang and Chow did likewise on the mechs they were riding.

  Rade swerved toward the damaged building, moving close to the highlighted spots assigned to Tahoe. His friend threw those demolition bricks in turn at the indicated areas, and when they impacted, they affixed to the material and an indicator turned green. Sometimes, they landed inside existing cracks within the surface. Other times, the charges attached to the vines that covered the exterior, rather than the exterior itself.

  “Valjean, is it going to matter if the charges aren’t actually in contact with the building?” Rade said. “And instead attached to the clinging plants?”

  “It will have a minor effect,” Valjean said. “The blast will still rip apart those plants, and crater the underlying surface. The craters might be slightly misplaced, however, which could influence the timing of the collapse.”

  “We’ll just have to live with it,” Rade said, continuing forward.

  The team exhausted its charges.

  “There are still a few spots left,” Chow said.

  “That will just have to do,” Rade said.

  He continued forward. Slicers were appearing on his rearview camera feed then, scrambling through the path the Falcons had carved into the undergrowth.

  Rade reached the far end between the two buildings, past the impact zone.

  A glance at his overhead map told him the Slicers were beginning to stop, seeming reluctant to follow between the two structures. More and more of them piled up behind those in the fore, coming to halt well before entering the impact zone.

  “They’re not following…” Jiang said.

  Rade continued running for a few moments, but when it became obvious the aliens weren’t going to follow, he transmitted: “Halt!”

  He and the others stopped. He turned around and switched on his speakers, full volume: “Come on, you chickenshit bastards! Show us what you got!”

  But the aliens didn’t move.

  “They suspect a trap…” Tahoe said.

  “Maybe they spotted us placing the charges,” Pyro offered.

  “We’re right here!” Rade tried again.

  The aliens abruptly began spreading apart; the gathering host split down the middle, and each portion headed toward the far flanks of the two buildings.

  “We move!” Rade and the others turned around, just in time to evade the aliens that were already overflowing past the nearest edges of the buildings—apparently these particular creatures had stealthily rounded the structures while the others directly behind served as a distraction.

  “Is it just me or are these bitches getting smarter?” Bender complained. “Man, it’s all I can do to resist releasing my 5-way on their alien asses.”

  “What do we do about the charges?” Pyro asked.

  “Nothing we can do,” Rade replied. “Maybe we’ll return this way at some point to retrieve them. Until then, no kaboom.”

  “Damn,” Pyro said.

  Ahead, the foliage-laden ground sloped upward. Rade realized a building had once stood there, but it had fallen against another, forming a forty-five-degree angle. Beyond it, the other buildings seemed relatively close together, their adjacent rooftops providing a good open area for Rade and his team to put some distance between themselves and the enemy. It would cost some jumpjet fuel, but it would be worth it, he thought. A quick glance at the fuel levels across the team told him they still had enough to make some good progress leaping between those buildings, so he gave the order:

  “We climb the slope!” Rade said.

  Rade and the others headed through the foliage onto the slope. The climbing vines here were almost as thick as on the streets below, and progress was slower than Rade would have liked. Some of the aliens were catching up, because they followed the paths the Falcons pressed into the undergrowth, so Rade and the others used their jumpjets to put some extra distance between themselves and the enemy. Rade was reluctant to employ thrust like that too many times, knowing that fuel was a precious commodity at the moment.

  As he got close to the top of the slope, where the building had slammed midway into the other structure, a glance in his rearview mirror told him the aliens were retreating.

  Confused, Rade continued forward, reaching the ve
rtical wall of the other building, and began climbing it.

  “They’re running away,” Jiang said.

  “Why?” Pyro said.

  “Maybe they’re scared of us,” Bender said.

  “Not us, but this building, maybe,” Tahoe said.

  “You think this building harbors some other type of alien or weapon?” Chow asked.

  “One or the other,” Tahoe replied. “Or maybe some contagion.”

  “Well, we’re wearing pressurized suits, so we don’t have to worry about that shit,” Bender said.

  “Stop!” Rade said, deciding he wasn’t going to put his team into some unknown danger. If there were other aliens here or automated weapons, he wasn’t keen on running into them.

  He gripped one of the branches tightly, and turned around to survey the glowing cityscape before him. He could see the aliens wending through the night, returning to the original building he and the others had fled. They were scaling it, and flowing onto the starship waiting on top.

  “It’s almost like they’ve been recalled,” Tahoe said.

  “They’ve given up on us?” Chow said.

  “We can only hope,” Pyro commented.

  “What if…” Tahoe began. “What if they came here to retrieve something in particular, and now that they’ve collected it, they’re going to leave. And they don’t really care about abandoning us here, on this world.”

  “Then if that’s true, we probably should start running back to that ship,” Bender said.

  “It could be a ruse,” Rade said. “There could be aliens left behind in the foliage below, waiting to ambush us when we pass their way. If we really wanted to return, we’d have to take a roundabout route.”

  “So, let’s do it?” Pyro said. “I don’t want to be stranded here.”

  “But you don’t know where the aliens are going after this,” Tahoe said. “The next location might not be so appealing. Assuming we make it to the starship in time, we could find ourselves surrounded by a whole planet of these assholes. At least here, we have a chance of survival.”

  “Yeah, for what, a few days, until our oxygen and food run out?” Pyro said.